Total War: General discussion.

Perhaps, but staying in stage 4 isn't as hard as it sounds, especially since the government buildings that consume renown are very strong.

Yeah when you put it that way, that could legitimately be an interesting late-game option and gives a reason to bank your money.

31 turns into Pairen's (Gongsun Zan) campaign.

I was fortunate that the Han Empire didn't send any full stack to fight me, which allowed me to absorb their land around my capital fairly easily.

What was unfortunate, however, was the famine event I got early into the game. It wreaked Havoc on my settlements, spawning multiple rebel armies that I had to put down. They even temporarily captured one of my cities.

Liu Yu and Reiha (Yuan Shao) declared war on me, as is usual. I completely wiped out Liu Yu and reduced Reiha to a couple cities. Now I'll focus on fighting Zhang Yan.

My renown level is at 3rd stage, which has... no effect, just regular boring Gongsun Zan.

Realm Divide reached on turn 90 as the Obama clan. Conquering Central Japan proved to be the right course of action, it was much easier to expand and increase your economy there than going hugging the coast and trying to focus on keeping control of a blacksmith province. In the end, I had the opportunity to expand a bit further north when the Sado clan took a foothold on the main island and switched sides to the Emperor to declare war on me. Then, with only allied Shogunate clans to the north, I focused my attention south, to fight the main Imperial clan there, the Choshu. During the war, my daimyo's army was attacked by a far superior Choshu group, and died in battle (I ultimately won that battle, but with extremely heavy losses). This turned out to be a blessing, because his heir immediately jumped to maximum honor.

Most of Northern Japan is held by Shogunate clans, but the Matsumae of Hokkaido decided to throw in their lot with the Emperor, which means there will be a risk of invasion from there if I'm not careful and my allies don't defend themselves properly. Thankfully, there is a large number of Shogunate clans there (who have been at war with each other for a while, but with Realm Divide will soon make peace and rally behind my banners), so I hope they'll manage to defend me from the north while I focus against the Choshu Imperial vanguard.

My main weakness at the moment is my lackluster navy, so I'll have to hurry up with upgrading that.

Edited by Resileafs on May 21st 2022 at 10:39:12 AM

Realm Divide in FotS is a lot less of a PITA than in the prior games. It's so much more fun to only have half of Japan after your ass than the other half.

Then again, FotS is generally a lot easier even if you aren't using the Game Breakers, just because allegiances allow for clear allies and enemies in the dangerous early game.

Edited by Ramidel on May 21st 2022 at 9:42:43 AM

This is how I keep the Renown mechanic from getting into the critical point. Pairen's unique building has been retooled. The new Headquarters of Military Command got buffed across the board (+8% income, -10% corruption, -1 mustering turn), and it consumes 7 renown per turn.

My only complaint about the renown mechanic is that the building upgrades are only available for small regional cities, so it takes a long time for you to finally be able to reduce your renown.

Obama campaign complete on turn 138, much quicker than my previous campaigns. I assume it's because the Obama start in a central position, but it might also be because I'm getting better at it. At the very least, the allied AI was far more aggressive this time around, because I was forced to attack the Matsumae in Hokkaido to have enough provinces to win. I did not have much difficulty fighting the Imperial clans, both because they didn't get all that good armies to fight me, and again because the allied AI really took the fight to them. At the end of the day though, the Obama aren't that interesting a clan to play, but they certainly have great money bonuses.

Next up, I will play as the Saga clan, an Imperial clan located on Kyushu. Their strength is in starting with trade with the Western power from the beginning, meaning a ton of money from the start and an early foreign veteran. They also have more growth from industry (which means I'll focus on researching industrial techs to build factories), better artillery accuracy (and their starting army has a Parrott gun) and cheaper ships. Since I start the campaign allied with the nearest clan, I will make my first course of action to capture every island around Kyushu. We'll see from there who I can make war against.

Edited by Resileafs on May 22nd 2022 at 9:25:35 AM

The Saga are the definition of Disc-One Nuke, along with the Satsuma. Really fast start.

A bunch:

My interest in Empire's American Civil War mod is mainly the fact that it has a campaign, rather than just battles. To me, the attraction of seeing if I can do better than Lee did at Gettysburg or Grant did at Shiloh pales to seeing how wildly I can run history off the rails.

Taiping Rebellion wouldn't be hated that much (and the supposed hate for Eight Princes is overblown, if you actually head over to Zhihu, people are more complaining about certain Princes not being where they are based historically than anything, it's really more than no one cares about that period just like very few people care about, say, King Phillip's War). The main problem with setting a Total War game in that period is actually treating the colonialist partitioning of China in a remotely respectful manner. Chinese gamers will howl, rightfully so, if you allow the player to play one of the Eight Nation Alliance armies and burn down the Old Summer Palace. I suppose there's a sliver of a golden path where it can be portrayed as an example of how terrible in its banalty Western colonialism was, but it's far more likely players are just going to make Youtube vids where they raze Beijing and set it to the "55 days in Peking" song.

Gameplay wise, late Qing era Total Wars would also suffer from the fact that China is such a big entity that the wars during the Century of Humiliation were only a thing because late-dynasty decline had already set it and it was fundamentally unable to get its shit together. Once you hand the reins to a human player who can do whatever he wants without worry of getting beheaded by a certain bitchy Empress Dowager, you basically just end up fulfilling Napoleon's sleeping giant quote, exactly like playing Liu Hong in the Mandate of Heaven start date.

Personally I think the best time period for them to do another East Asian game would actually be the late Song Dynasty. You already have five factions built in (Song, Dali, Xi Xia, and either Khitans and Jurchens or Jurchens and Mongols depending on when you set it), none of the factions are so strong as to be able to dominate each other at the outset, and it's also during a time when gunpowder weapons started being a thing. Best of all, it would finally put that stupid "Great Wall was useless because it didn't keep the Mongols out" myth to rest.

Well, I'm currently eagerly awaiting Rise of the White Sun, so maybe Xinhai: Total War would be a good setting? With Japan as a possible unplayable last boss (to avoid encouraging unnecessary wehraboo).

Edited by Ramidel on May 23rd 2022 at 1:40:23 AM

You can just quoteblock.

Apparently CA decided to wish Three Kingdoms a happy third birthday.

Let's just say that people aren't amused.

No surprise there, Lord knows whose idea it was that killing Three Kingdoms would be a good move.

Oh, it made complete sense from a financial standpoint - they pretty much screwed up the content cycle and the new DLCs apparently weren't very profitable.

So they decided to pull the plug instead of spending more money on trying to fix it.

What is incredibly stupid is offering the Three Kingdoms soundtrack for sale, even though they uploaded the completel soundtrack to YouTube themselves a long time ago.

Honestly, CA's marketing department is kind of a joke.

Edited by DrunkenNordmann on May 24th 2022 at 2:35:18 PM

Well, happy 3rd birthday for Three Kingdoms too

So apparently "killing" = stop releasing DLC? I don't quite get that logic. Most games I play don't get DLC after the first year, if at all. .

Edited by RAlexa21th on May 24th 2022 at 6:35:20 AM

Not releasing DLC, no more bug fixes etc. In other words. CA completely stopped supporting the game last year.

Edited by DrunkenNordmann on May 24th 2022 at 4:12:31 PM

Okay? Most games also do that. By that logic 99% of games are killed.

Let me put it this way, Rome 2 should have been pulled the plug years ago with the Emperor Edition DLC, but it still got the Empire Divided and Rise of the Republic DL Cs, along with a lot of bugfixing. And Rome 2 was a disaster at launch while Three Kingdoms was very much more polished from the get go.

Also, when one considers that one of the main competitors of Creative Assembly is Paradox, which has made games that have lasted for years in regards to content, yeah, it can be a bit jarring.

Edited by raziel365 on May 24th 2022 at 7:37:05 AM

Okay, so unlike Rome II, Three Kingdoms doesn't need DLC to be good. That's my take here.

Unless Three Kingdoms get a naval warfare DLC (which should be a base game feature, not a DLC), I don't think they can release anything with substantial value.

Edited by RAlexa21th on May 24th 2022 at 7:47:49 AM

I think it's the lack of bug fixes that is really bothersome. Not having more DLC is hardly a problem, the only starting date that could realistically be added is Chi Bi, and it's not like the game has a naval battle system (which, looking at the naval battles of the time period, would be incredibly boring) to make it work. But outright saying no more bug fixes and patches certainly was the wrong way to go about it since they made that announcement like, right after the release of the last DLC before any bug patching could be made.

Pretty much. Especially since some of the later updates broke some stuff or screwed over some factions - for example, the Yellow Turbans' ability to unlock additional diplomatic options when ranking up doesn't always work, they never got their own version of the new Imperial Court screen (meaning one of their slots is always locked to them as it can only be used by family members) and when CA added court actions, they only did so for the Han factions - but non-Han factions can still be targeted by them.

CA also teased some kind of northern expansion not too long before just shutting down support completely, if I recall correctly.

99% of games are not Total War games, CA has long since established that if you buy their games you aren't just buying the release content. You're also buying extensive post-launch support.

The Warhammer games got it, Rome 2 got it, and Three Kingdoms was supposed to get it but it suddenly didn't.

It shouldn't be a mystery as to why people were unhappy about that outcome. It was both directly contrary to most precedent and also opposite to what CA themselves clearly promised.

I hahaven'touched any of the DLC except A World Betrayed despite having 4 out of 5 start dates so I can't say I share the sentiment.

Most games do, in fact, provide patches for bugs for a while after release. The fact that 3K is still buggy and is not going to be fixed is a problem.